


galactic appeal

by dulceit



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Bounty Hunters, M/M, star wars-inspired setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27275119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dulceit/pseuds/dulceit
Summary: “Wait, hang on, wait!” Johnny shouts, pushing back into the ring. He inwardly mourns his chances at a silent escape. “Don’t kill him!”The guy blinks, head snapping up. He looks as surprised about Johnny still being there as Johnny is. “I’m not going—” he starts to say, and then the criminal spits out a particularly furious alien curse and bucks his entire body sharply. Johnny only manages to take a step back and thinkshitbefore the guy is flung off the alien's shoulders and hurled full-tilt into him.The air leaves him in a long whoosh as they smash into the dirt.
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 11
Kudos: 56
Collections: nct title fest 2020





	galactic appeal

**Author's Note:**

> for nct title fest prompt #NTF105

The _Sledgehammer_ , contrary to its name, isn’t the most robust of starships. It’s stayed in one piece through the years and its engine has yet to ever give out, but any dockhand who’s ever had to work with the ship can assure you that it really isn’t worthy of its name. It’s hardly bigger than a starfighter, for one thing, and the only rock its sleek little frame could possibly bust through would be a rock made of tin foil.

But it’s the ship Johnny chose, and it’s the ship Johnny spent five years’ hard-earned savings on, so rock-busting or not the _Sledgehammer_ is his baby. According to some people, though—

“—that’s not an excuse for whatever you’ve just bought.”

“It’s a new circuit multiplexer,” Johnny repeats, closing his hand around the tiny piece defensively, “and I needed it.” 

“It cost you _seven thousand credits,_ Johnny,” Taeyong says. He sets a glass of lemon water down on the bar in front of him. “I don’t know how you plan on paying for fuel to get off this planet, but you can start by not blowing whatever you have left on alcohol.”

Johnny frowns down at the glass. “I ordered whiskey.”

“And I ordered forty credits payment,” Taeyong sighs, unsympathetic. “Which isn’t a price I think you can afford right now.” He glances at the circuit multiplexer skeptically. “Was that really worth the money?”

“It relays data from the ship’s sensors to the sensor computer,” Johnny says sniffily, “so, yes. If I want to know when I’m about to be impaled by a hostile missile, then I’d say it’s worth the money.” 

Taeyong holds his hands up in surrender. “Okay, Mr. Space Captain, okay.” He’s drawn away by another customer before he can say anything else, and Johnny watches him move down the bar to take their order before looking at his own glass. He takes a sip and resists grimacing at the sour lemony tang. 

A few minutes pass and soon rush hour starts up, more and more aliens coming in to jostle at the cantina's bar. Getting out of here will be a bitch once the rest of the rush has packed in. Johnny catches Taeyong’s eye and jerks his thumb over his shoulder at the entrance, and Taeyong nods and waves him away. 

NEO-100 is about as unfriendly as a desert planet can get. Johnny’s met with the hostile glares of multiple aliens the second he steps out of the cantina, but he sends them all a handsome smile and ignores them for the rest of the walk back to the landing docks. The majority of NEO-100's population is extraterrestrial, which means that, one, getting around is only possible if you have at least a minor grasp of several languages, and two, you can’t survive without skin tougher than nails. Taeyong’s one of the few civil humans Johnny’s ever met on the planet, so he makes sure to drop by whenever he makes a pit stop for parts.

He manages to reach the marketplace just a few streets down from the docks without incident. Maybe, he thinks optimistically, this will be the first time he gets off this hellhole without someone—

“SUH YOUNGHO!”

“You’re fucking kidding,” Johnny mumbles. He counts to five before turning around. 

Standing in the middle of the road is an alien double his size, two sets of tree-trunk arms crossed over his chest and a huge bottle of spirits dangling from one of his hands. “Suh Youngho,” he repeats slowly, lips peeling back in an ugly grin. “Never thought I’d see you here again.”

Johnny shoves the circuit multiplexer into his pockets and pastes on his best smile. “It’s been a while, L’agu! How are you?”

“Don’t talk nice to me, Suh,” L’agu sneers. He pauses to take a deep swig of alcohol and wipe his mouth with the back of one hand. “I haven’t forgotten what you did to me and my crew.”

“That was two years ago!” Johnny exclaims through closed, still-smiling teeth. He spreads his empty hands placatingly. “You can’t still be mad about that.”

L’agu’s expression turns sour. “I think you’re wrong about that, Suh.”

The entire market’s starting to notice them. Johnny swallows and realizes all paths that might have been exits are now blocked by the attracted ring of spectators, their wares and businesses forgotten as they crowd around curiously. Some asshole human getting beaten up by the planet’s most infamous space pirate is bound to be a spectator sport. 

“C’mon, L’agu,” Johnny tries, hiding his panic with a laugh as his eyes dart around for way out, “it was just a few machine parts, nothing major.”

“You stranded us in the Outer Rim for a _week_ ,” L’agu snarls. “And after everything we did for you!”

Johnny starts backing away towards a part of the crowd that’s spread thinner than the rest. “All I took was bits of the backup engine, you should’ve been able to start moving again sooner than that!” If he runs full throttle he might be able to shove his way through and make it to the docks. “I mean, I expected better of you, L’agu! Best captain on NEO-100, my ass—”

It seems to hit a nerve. L’agu roars with anger and unfolds all four of his arms, winding one back as Johnny prepares to bolt, and—

“Whoa there, big guy.”

A hand— _human,_ Johnny notices, freezing in shock—shoots out from the crowd to wrap around L’agu’s wrist. It doesn’t do anything towards stopping the momentum, but it does catch the alien off guard long enough for the human to hook another hand around his enormous arm and launch off the ground, vaulting up onto his shoulders. Johnny barely has time to blink before the guy’s swinging a leg over and locking it around L’agu’s neck. 

“Wait, hang on, wait!” Johnny exclaims, snapping into action and pushing back into the ring. He inwardly mourns his chances at a silent escape. “Don’t kill him!”

The guy blinks, head snapping up. He looks about as surprised about Johnny still being there as Johnny is. “I’m not going—” he starts to say, and then L’agu spits out a particularly furious alien curse and bucks his entire body sharply. Johnny only manages to take a step back and think _shit_ before the guy is flung off L’agu’s shoulders and slammed full-tilt into Johnny. 

The air leaves him in a long whoosh as they smash into the dirt. 

“Fuck,” the guy groans. He rolls off Johnny first with his arm clutched to his chest. “Shit, _ow,_ oh my god.” 

Johnny pushes himself up onto his elbows with a wheeze and looks over, an insult or barbed comment already on the tip of his tongue. The anger melts a little when he spots the redness swelling around the guy’s wrist. 

“Hey,” he says, crawling closer, “hey, are you okay? What—” He gets a closer look at his face. “—is your name, sweetheart, I’m Johnny.”

He’s met with a beat of silence. “Jaehyun,” attractive-stranger finally says, “and it’s amazing how subtle you are.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Johnny says with a grin. Jaehyun returns it, seemingly despite himself. “We should maybe—”

A roar from the crowd is their only warning before one of L’agu’s enormous fists blots out the sun, swinging down towards them like a meteor towards the earth. Johnny barely lunges to the side in time for the fist to crash into the ground a hair’s width away from him. He scrambles to his feet with his heart in his throat and sees Jaehyun doing the same on the other side of L’agu, arm still cradled against his chest.

“ _Humans_ ,” L’agu snarls over the clamoring of the crowd, winding his fist back. He still has his bottle clenched in one white-knuckled hand. “So _arrogant_ —I should’ve killed you the moment you came to our ship!”

“Should’ve done a lot of things, L’agu,” Johnny yells distractedly, trying to catch Jaehyun’s eye in the gap between L’agu’s arms. When he finally does, he gestures at the alcohol bottle with a jerk of his chin. Jaehyun squints at him and Johnny does it again, this time accompanying it with a grabbing motion followed by a smashing one over the back of his head. _BOTTLE,_ he mouths.

Jaehyun’s face clears in understanding, but he shakes his head adamantly and points at his bent arm. Johnny ducks a flying swipe from L’agu and manages to tuck and roll over to Jaehyun’s side of the clearing. 

“What’s wrong?” he shouts. 

Jaehyun tugs him out of the way of another blow. “Sprained my wrist!”

“You can’t do that climbing thing on him with a sprained wrist?”

“Why don’t _you_ try it, man?”

“Okay, fair point!” They duck and weave around more windmilling alien limbs. “Change of plans, then—I’ll vault you up there!” 

_“What?”_

Johnny makes a vague motion with his hands. “Like, give you a boost! Then you—” 

“Grab the bottle and smash it over his head, yeah,” Jaehyun says, but he still looks doubtful. “Is that really gonna—”

“Too late!” Johnny yells, and he’s lunging for Jaehyun.

*

All it takes is Taeyong looking at them once for him to start kicking customers out of his cantina, jaw set tightly as he ignores the garbled multi-lingual grumblings of tipsy patrons. The doors slam shut in the ensuing silence and Johnny rubs a guilty hand over the back of his neck.

“It’s rush hour, Taeyong, you don’t have to,” he starts, but Taeyong gives him a look and ducks to pull a medical kit out from under the bar. Johnny sighs and waves a wary Jaehyun over to sit at the bar with him. 

“You just left here an hour ago,” Taeyong says. He glances over at the tied, unconscious form of L’agu that they’ve dumped in the corner of the cantina and manages to look even more unimpressed than he already does. “How did you manage to get knocked around _and_ catch a space criminal in an hour?” 

He beckons for Johnny to prop his leg up on the counter and starts to bandage the gash on his calf, fresh from the glass that went flying after Jaehyun broke the bottle over L’agu’s head.

Johnny shrugs and plucks plaintively at the new bandages. “The criminal started it.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Taeyong says, eyebrows raising. He nods at Jaehyun. “Did the criminal sprain _his_ arm, too?”

Jaehyun snorts at that. “That’s mostly Captain Suave here’s fault, actually.”

“Can’t say I’m too surprised,” Taeyong says. He ignores Johnny’s insulted noise and holds out a hand over the bar, and Jaehyun only hesitates for a few seconds before gingerly extending his sprained wrist.

“Oh,” Johnny says belatedly, watching as Taeyong carefully turns Jaehyun’s arm over, “this is Jaehyun, by the way. We met down at the market. He’s, um—?”

“A bounty hunter,” Jaehyun supplies. Taeyong’s eyes widen briefly, and Jaehyun gives them both a grimace-smile. “Four-arms over there was my bounty, yeah.”

Johnny can sense Taeyong shooting him a look in his peripheral, but he ignores it. “Shit, will you still be able to turn him in?”

Jaehyun tilts his head dryly. “Feels like I should be asking you. It seems like you guys had some kind of history?”

“Ah,” Johnny says, “yeah, about that—”

A rapid knock on the door. All three of them look up, Taeyong clicking his tongue after a second in annoyance. “I’ll get it,” he says. “Probably just another trader drunk off their ass.”

Jaehyun looks back to him as Taeyong heads towards the door. “Nice friend,” he comments.

“He’s a good guy,” Johnny agrees, and picks up the first-aid materials left on the bar. He extends his hand out; after a beat, Jaehyun sets his wrist into his open palm, and Johnny fixes the bandage against the swollen area. “Probably one of the only good guys on this planet.”

Jaehyun _hmms._ “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You a good guy like him?”

“Ouch. Probably not. Seems like I get tangled up in shitty things.”

“Why’d you bring me here, then?”

 _“Welll,”_ Johnny drawls, his eyes trained on his handiwork, “how could I not help the pretty face that saved my ass?”

When he chances a glance up, Jaehyun’s looking at him cryptically, expression somehow knowing and unreadable all at once. “Uh-huh,” Jaehyun says. 

Johnny starts to say something else when a thought suddenly occurs to him, making him freeze mid-speech. After a second, he digs abruptly into his pocket as Jaehyun watches him, and closes his fist around the circuit multiplexer that he shoved away during the encounter with L’agu.

 _Fuck._

“What?” Jaehyun says, noticing his expression. 

Johnny opens his hand defeatedly to show him the tiny circuit multiplexer, splintered into even tinier pieces in his palm. It’s shattered beyond repair, probably crushed under his own weight during the chaos of the fight.

“This was a piece I needed to fix my ship. Cost me way too much and now it’s broken. I don’t—”

“Wait,” Jaehyun interrupts, “you have a starship?”

Johnny blinks, blindsided. “Yeah?”

“One that you own?” 

“Yeah.”

“Then you can get off this planet.” 

“Well. No, not without this circuit multiplexer.”

Jaehyun’s eyes narrow and he sits back, quiet, just as Taeyong returns from the door.

“It was one of the local kids,” Taeyong says. “I give them pocket change to let me know what’s going on. Apparently some crewmates of L’agu’s are looking for him, which also means that they’re looking for you two.”

Johnny scrubs a hand over his face wearily. “Great.”

“You should probably get out of here,” Taeyong offers. “Dump L’agu in a ditch and get off this planet. You got what you came here for, Johnny, right?”

“Yeah,” Johnny says, muffled, “that would be nice, except actually it turns out I broke the goddamn piece I came here for, and now I have no money.”

“You _what?”_

“I probably landed on it during the fight.”

“That cost you seven thousand credits!”

“I _know,_ Taeyong. Who knows how the hell I’ll save up enough to—”

Unexpectedly, Jaehyun rises to his feet. “Hey. I’ll cut you a deal.”

The bar goes quiet in surprise. 

“You need money to repair your ship, right?” Jaehyun says. “L’agu’s bounty is _thirty thousand credits._ But there’s a whole pirate crew looking for him now, which makes my job a lot harder solo.” He leans in, light from the bar catching golden on his eyes. “You help me get L’agu to my client and I’ll split the bounty with you. In return, you use that money to get your starship going, and let me hitch a ride off this hellhole. How about it?”

Johnny can feel his eyebrows climbing to his hairline. He runs a considering hand through his hair, the gears in his head starting to turn. “Damn, mister bounty hunter. You really wanna get off this planet that bad?”

“Yes,” Jaehyun says, not a second of hesitation.

Taeyong whistles lowly. “Sounds like a good deal, Johnny. Win-win situation for you both.”

“Are you sure about this?” Johnny asks Jaehyun. “A lot of trust to put in a not-good guy you just met.”

Jaehyun offers his uninjured hand and Johnny clasps it after a second, letting himself be pulled to his feet. “I never said you weren’t a good guy,” Jaehyun says, “you said that yourself.”

“Then what do you think?”

“Verdict’s still out.”

Johnny laughs. “Ouch again. How do I know I can trust _you,_ then?”

“You hit on me the moment we met, so I think that bridge is already crossed, spaceman,” Jaehyun says dryly, and Johnny mimes an arrow shooting through his heart.

Another quick, insistent knock on the door. Taeyong looks up, furrowing his brow, before quickly circling back around the bar to put away the first-aid kit. “A second warning from the kids,” he says. “You two are running out of time. If you’re really planning on getting L’agu to Jaehyun’s client, you should go now before his whole crew gets here.” 

”Yeah.” Johnny grabs his coat from the back of the chair and hurries towards L’agu’s prone form in the corner, glancing over his shoulder at Jaehyun. “We can take the back streets. I know a guy that can help us smuggle this fucker out of here, unless you had—?”

Jaehyun shakes his head, coming over quickly to help him wrestle with L’agu’s body. “The cargo droid I bribed to help me tow the body’s long gone by now.”

“Where’s your client located?” 

“Next town over. A lot of desert to cross before we get there.”

“Fantastic,” Johnny grunts, and heaves one of L’agu’s many arms over his shoulder. 

Just before dragging the deadweight mass of their bounty out the backdoor, Johnny turns back to Taeyong. He hesitates. “You know, you could always…”

“Nope,” Taeyong says firmly, and Johnny shrugs, having expected as much. “Some of us like keeping away from the danger, yeah? Try not to die out there. I’ll send them the other way if they come looking.”

Johnny reaches out with his free hand and pulls Taeyong into a one-armed hug. “I owe you one, Taeyong. I’ll swing by again next time I’m in the galaxy.”

“It was nice meeting you,” Jaehyun adds. “Thanks for everything.”

“Very cute. You two are perfect for each other,” Taeyong says, and pushes them into the outside air.

*

Dragging a massive four-armed space pirate through the streets of NEO-100 turns out to be one of the most difficult, suspicious activities Johnny’s ever done, which is saying a lot considering the many difficult, suspicious things he’s done in his life.

They end up stashing L’agu momentarily in an alleyway once they reach a safe distance from the bar so that Johnny can radio his smuggler contact. The sun simmers low in the sky as he steps up to the small radio tower set on the side of a busy square, hands tucked into his pockets casually.

A few seconds of static after he plugs into the radio, then: _“Johnny?”_

“Thank god,” he says, trying not to sag in relief. “I’ve never been happier to hear your voice, Mark.”

_“Awww. That’s not a good sign.”_

“I need a favor, man. I can’t get into the details right now, but I’ve gotta get some large cargo to the next town.”

_“…Large cargo?”_

“Large cargo with _big_ payout. Big payout but big risk, meaning I’m being hunted, meaning I need a ride right _now._ ” In his peripheral, he can see the mouth of the alleyway that they’ve shoved L’agu into, Jaehyun calmly standing guard just outside of it. 

_“Ohhhh,”_ Mark says. _“Gotcha. I thought you were here this time for ship parts.”_

“I’ll fill you in on that later. Listen, remember the time I saved you from the—”

_“Noooo, don’t bring that up. Gimme your location and I’ll be there.”_

Johnny rattles off his coordinates and disconnects from the call. 

“Everything okay?” Jaehyun asks when he returns.

“Yeah,” Johnny says. “Mark owes me a favor from a while back. He knows the ins and outs of this whole planet; feels like the little twerp’s everywhere, sometimes. He’ll get here soon.”

“Sounds good,” Jaehyun says, and tucks his shoulder against the wall, leaning against it as if they don’t have a wanted space pirate stuffed under a pile of burlap sacks behind them. Johnny almost asks him how he’s so calm before remembering—right. Bounty hunter. Probably a normal thing for him. 

“What’s wrong?” he says instead, because Jaehyun’s giving him a searching sort of look. 

“You wanna talk about your history with four-arms?” Jaehyun says. “Never got to hear it at the bar.”

“Ah,” Johnny says. He steps out of the way of a group of noisy travelers, moving closer to be out of the bustle of the street. “It’s, uh. Not something I’m proud of?”

Jaehyun pauses at that. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“Nah, it’s not that bad, I just,” he grimaces, “stole? Some stuff? From him. A lot of stuff, actually. It was a long time ago, way back when I was taking a lot of odd jobs around the galaxy to get whatever credits I could.”

“You were on his crew?”

Johnny shrugs with forced breeziness. “I did a lot of shitty work for a lot of shitty criminals back then. He had this job for a pilot that was out in the Outer Rim, and I didn’t have a lot going for me, so I took it.” He can feel Jaehyun watching him steadily. “I guess that job was the last straw. Long story short, I had enough at one point, so I stole some engine parts and booked it out of there.”

“And now you’re here.”

“And now I’m here. Got my own ship—the _Sledgehammer_ —a couple months ago with the credits I saved up. Been trying to move past it all and become a whole new space casanova, yeah?”

That gets a smile out of Jaehyun. “You told me not kill him back at the marketplace,” he points out. 

“Like I said,” Johnny says bracingly, “I’m moving past it.”

“...Yeah,” Jaehyun says at length, the line of his mouth looser than before. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

Johnny opens his mouth to ask when Jaehyun’s eyes suddenly fix on something over his shoulder, body going abruptly tense. 

“What—” is all he manages, before Jaehyun’s shoving him towards the ground and the street explodes with blasterfire. 

Dust and dirt goes flying as the crowd scatters, the throng of vendors rushing past in a panic to flee the street. Johnny lands on his back with a wheeze, winded, gritty sand in the back of his throat. A blastershot hits the ground next to him and more dirt explodes into the air. He manages to roll over onto one elbow in time to see three forms advancing rapidly out of the haze, hulking and long-limbed, firearms pointed directly at Jaehyun standing barehanded in front of the alleyway.

The one at the front speaks, voice muffled by the covering over their face. “Give us L’agu.”

“Who the hell are you?” Jaehyun says instead.

The leader just jerks their blaster meaningfully. “Not you. L’agu.”

They haven’t caught sight of Johnny yet. Jaehyun had pushed him down behind a vacant merchant stall, hidden out of sight by the stacks of crates and wares. He keeps his eyes trained on what he can see of Jaehyun’s face, his heart thundering in his throat as bodies rush past them in the street.

“We know about you, bounty hunter,” the leader says. “Jung. You have been picking off captains in our network left and right.” 

_“‘Captains in your network,’”_ Jaehyun repeats, tone light. “I think you mean crime bosses with rightful bounties on their heads.”

“Rightful? It is a little late for a bounty hunter with your reputation to grow a conscience and become righteous.”

Jaehyun shrugs, rolling his shoulder back. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Give us L’agu.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Fine,” the leader grunts, “then you die.”

The sudden, telltale whirr of their blaster preparing to fire. Johnny jerks to his feet in alarm at the same time that an engine revs loudly into the chaos of the street. A familiar cargo speeder roars into the square, dirty and scuffed and looking to Johnny like a miracle. 

It screeches to a stop on the other end of the square. The dark smudge of Mark ducks out of the pilot seat window, tugs the pin out of a smoke grenade, and hurls it into the air. Chaos breaks out again instantly, the masked aliens shouting in surprise and firing blindly into the sudden smoke. 

Johnny lurches out from behind the stall as the three attackers rush towards Mark’s location. Jaehyun’s nowhere to be seen, the haze too thick for Johnny to make out anything, but he pushes the thought aside to seize L’agu’s binds and heave him into the street. 

Another grenade lands somewhere near, making his ears ring shrilly. It feels like he’s dragging a sack of rocks behind him. He makes it as far as the middle of the square before a blaster presses against his side.

“Don’t move, Suh,” the masked leader says. 

Johnny goes still.

“I knew you would be around here somewhere. Dragging the body of your former captain, no less. Give him to me.”

“Can’t you fuckers just leave me alone?” Johnny says, abruptly tired. “I can’t get anywhere on this planet without someone from L’agu’s crew trying to kill me.”

“You were part of the crew once, too. Until you stranded us on the Outer Rim for—”

“You deserved that," Johnny snaps. “You and L’agu and everyone else on that ship deserved a lot worse, actually, for what you were doing out there.”

The leader tilts their head ominously. “You are trying to grow a conscience, too. Just like that bounty hunter. I see.”

They bring the blaster up to rest against Johnny’s temple, then—

Jaehyun lunges out of the smoke, abruptly visible and blindingly fast. He strikes the blaster out of the alien's grasp with his uninjured hand and lashes at their face in the same motion, making them stumble back with a roar of pain.

Johnny dives for the unmanned blaster. He snatches it off the dirt with both hands and has it swung around to point at the leader as soon as he scrambles to his feet. His breath comes hard and fast, a high-pitched ringing still in his ears, everything feeling too sudden all at once with his finger on the trigger.

The leader growls at him from the ground. “Go on, Suh. You have never hesitated to kill.”

“Johnny,” Jaehyun says, and he looks up.

Jaehyun’s looking at him with that same sort of expression from before, strange and knowing, something meaningful in the way he meets Johnny’s eyes. “Let’s get out of here,” Jaehyun says. “Your guy’s over there. Let’s go.”

“I—”

“‘Moving past it’ and all that, right?” Jaehyun says, reaching out to catch his shoulder before moving away. “Come on.”

Johnny looks back at the leader. With a final grimace, he strikes out with the butt-end of the blaster, knocking them out cold, and throws the blaster down by their feet. The smoke swallows him up as he follows Jaehyun without another look back.

*

Things are quiet once Mark takes them past the edges of town.

The cargo vehicle cruises easy and swift through the empty deserts of NEO-100. They speed over the sand for half an hour without seeing more than the occasional scavenger camp and dune creature, the moon by now high overhead and turning everything silvery cool.

Johnny glances at Jaehyun out of the corner of his eye. They’re in the speeder’s open back, L’agu in the cargo space below, Mark up front in the pilot seat. (Mark had given him an alarmed look when he first leapt into the vehicle with a stranger; when Johnny shook his head, mouthing _he's with me,_ the look turned into gleeful, and now Johnny's dreading the inevitable interrogation once they reach their destination about his new bounty-hunter-partner). The night air rushes cool over his skin as he takes in Jaehyun’s face, calm and sort of devastatingly pretty in the moonlight. 

Jaehyun looks over then. “What?” he says, mouth quirking into a half-smile.

Johnny stares at his dimples for a second too long before managing to say, “Nothing. Just can’t believe how much has happened today.”

Jaehyun huffs out a breath. “Yeah. If you weren’t at the marketplace, I’d be in bed twenty thousand credits richer by now.”

“Hey,” Johnny gripes, swatting at him, and Jaehyun laughs. “I thought that’s not what you wanted, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“You said you wanted to get off this planet. That’s the end goal to all of this, right? Catching a ride out.”

“Oh,” Jaehyun says, and sits back. “Yeah. I’ve been trying to get out of here for years.”

“There’s no way you haven’t been able to sweet-talk—or threaten!—some merchant into taking you off-world. You’ve got, like—” Johnny gestures vaguely, “—galactic appeal.”

Jaehyun raises his eyebrows. “Okay, man,” he says, sounding amused. “Real smooth.”

“I’m serious,” Johnny insists, grinning. “I guess you got stuck with me as your way off this hellhole, though, huh. Sorry to hear that. I told you before that I always get tangled up in shitty things.”

“Including this?”

“Well,” Johnny says. He fiddles with the laces of his boots for a second and then looks over. “Maybe this won’t be so bad.”

Jaehyun holds his gaze for a few seconds. “Yeah,” he agrees, the same dimpled smile from before reappearing as he glances away. “Maybe not.”

The land stretches out endlessly around them. Johnny can feel the exhaustion of the day catching up to him, weighing heavy on his eyelids, and he lets himself settle back against the lip of the vehicle as they speed onward. For a few moments he just watches the specks of light in the distance grow closer, tiny and hopeful like a promise of better things to come.

He sleeps easy next to Jaehyun for the first time in days, the moon gleaming quietly above them in the sky.

*

*

**Author's Note:**

> ty for the fun prompt (and ty to the mods for being so patient)! everyone please open ur third eye and realize how Good johnjae is


End file.
